Virtua Fighter Crossroads Producer Reveals HBO Watchmen Spark for the Game
Ryu Ga Gotoku producer Riichiro Yamada has shared a surprising source behind his enthusiasm for bringing back Virtua Fighter after years of silence, explaining that the biggest spark for Virtua Fighter Crossroads came from a place you might not expect.
In an interview, Yamada said his creative inspiration for the next entry in the long-running fighting series was tied to HBO’s Watchmen. He described it as his “biggest inspiration” for the project, not because of the original series’ plot, but because of how it successfully pulled a decades-old comic into modern mainstream attention.
“Virtua Fighter, the series, has been very long,” Yamada explained. “It has its own lore, it has its own settings that have been there, but [it] has never been used for decades and for 20 plus years.”
He continued by drawing a direct comparison to Watchmen’s revival. “Watchmen was a very old American comics story which was revived as a drama 40 years-plus after,” he said. “For me, I thought it was very similar to the situation with Virtua Fighter, and it told me a lot about how to modernize the old settings, the old story, and then revive it.”
Based on what’s been shown so far, Virtua Fighter Crossroads is expected to lean into a narrative-focused story mode led by experienced veterans from the industry. Yamada also emphasized that the RGG team wants to move beyond its usual approach, aiming to broaden the franchise’s established world and lore rather than simply reusing familiar beats.
“We wanted to do something different from RGG in terms of style or method of the story,” he said. “We wanted to tell the story more, and we wanted to have the player be more immersed into the game and feel the narrative.”
If you’re the type of player who prefers to avoid being stuck watching cutscenes, Yamada offered reassurance. His goal is for players to experience the story through actual gameplay, instead of depending on cinematic sequences alone to carry the narrative.
“A lot of people won’t be just satisfied with nice cuts in the game, and pretty scenes or pretty cinematics,” he said. “It’s way better if you can play through it and understand the story by yourself.”
Yamada also confirmed the timeline, stating that Crossroads is set “10 to 20 years” after the events of Virtua Fighter 5. The focus, he said, is on giving the series’ well-known characters a “comeback” after they’ve been largely “almost forgotten” within the setting’s world.
Virtua Fighter Crossroads is scheduled for release in 2027, though a precise launch date hasn’t been announced yet.
Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.
